User blog:YourPrivateNightmare/Miss Fortune, Graves, and the non-existent diversity on bottom lane
Hai guise, it'z m-SHUT UP! Okay, what is it for today? Botlane that'S what it is. Introduction To start things of, I've never been a good ADC, but it's a role that has a weird attraction to it. So blablabla I've been trying to get better at ADCing and therefore had to put togehter a good bunch of ADCs i can play. The results were...depressing. Long story short, there are not many adcs I like/feel comfortable playing with. Now i could name you all the ADCs I technically can or can't play but let's stick to this. I have found great pleasure in playing and . I like how they work, mosty because they got a pretty strong/safe laning phase, aren't hypercarries (who just farm for 30 minutes and proceed to obliterate anything from there on), yet scale well into the game and, most importantly, actually use abilities frequently in order to amplify their damage (and don't just rightclick to victory) The problem Now the sad part: Neither Graves nor MF are really viable in the current meta. Why is that? Because the competitive scene has limited botlane to around 4 supports/adcs each. these are in my opinion: ADC: - - - - Support: - - - - While this is more likely overexaggerated, since we also see s, s, s and a few others float around, these 8 are probably the most solid picks there are. even if you play ranked (on low elo) it almost never changes: Soloqueue lobby procedure: Is Braum banned? If no, pick him Is Morgana banned? If no, pick her Is Lucian banned? If no, pick him It#s basically: Braum is op, if you don't ban him you risk botlane. MOrgana is a counter to everything...even if she isn't people will still always pick her because you can't do much wrong with her. If everything fails there's still Leona. For ADCs it is: can I Tristana? I think i can, let's go her. If the answer is no you pick Lucian, and if that guy's banned or picked people go either Vayne or Caitlyn. So basically: It's not like people pick these because they're so good at them. It's because people are FORCEd to pick them because not picking them would give them to the enemy, or simply wasting the potential tehy bring to a team. If you ask in Silver which support they prefer: "Leona" "Morgana" "Teemo .... kappa" I got used to banning Morgana when I'm first pick and go Braum if possible...simply because Braum helps winning games harder than any other support at the moment. The guidelines for successful botlanes are therefore: -ADC must be mobile or at great range to work: This is why Miss Fortune is an unviable pick, even though her laning phase and midgame is extremely potent. -Supports must have a lot of cc or protection of the former: this iwhy braum and Morgana dominate the scene and make immobile or cc-based marksmen impossible to be played (have you seen all the Varus and Ashe players? Neither did I...) The solution Well, overzealous as I am, I have tried to come up with a solution for this. First of all: Nerf the overequipped supports and cut them down to a specific role instead of making them allrounders: : My problem with her is. Q's snare duration is too long even for a skillshot. 2.5 seconds at max rank are enough, early rank duration needs to be nered even harder. The hitbox is grand bullshit too, so it needs clarity, like nida's spear. Her W is fine as it is, but her E...the problem i have with her E is that it's so potent lategame. All support morganas will buy ap one way or another..at least HOurglass. the shield scales well..too well in my opinion, too well for the fact that she also has her ultimate, which can disable a whole team without being able to retaliate (thanks to hourglass) Not to mention she deals helluvalot damage. So we either need to nerf her offensive potential in terms of cc duration and range, and emphasize her defensive turnaround character, or nerf her shield, possibly by making it smaller or like a targeted , in which case she can keep her offensive potential but make her E less potent in an all in. : Straightup damage and range nerfs on her E W and R. If Morgana ever gets nerfed into a less safe state, Leonas wikll come out everywhere and do waht they've done for aeons: Roflstomp anything without range or escapes. If you look at Leona's number you will find: moderate cooldown spells without a real manacost, insane range on gapcloser and AoE cc nuke as well as free tank stats early on, ocmbined with atrocious amounts of basedamage burst. More CD on ult and less range early, scaling range on her E to make her engages more predict- and avoidable, less early tankiness from W by reducing the base amount but increasing the scaling (rewarding armor and Mr purchase) : Similar to Leona, even tho he's much more difficult to approach. His identity is that of a tanky protector who continously peels for his teammates. tanky, mobile in fights and disruptive. that'S okay...but why does he need so much damage and cc? Get rid of the passive that says "champions who ahve recently been stunned receive bonus magic damage form Braums aas", since that makes him even solokill some aa based champs midgame, while they have no way of fighting back (shield blocking) or getting away (Q freezing). Secondly, reduce his passive's stun duration early on. 1.25 secs is too much, considering champs like only have a 0.75 stun in their kit with no other cc around. 0.75 at first scaling up to 1.25 -1.5 should be enough. Lategame it#s okay, because it's harder to apply to all enemies, but early it's toxic. To sum up: enforce protector by removing oppressive stun barrage : I like Nami, don't you dare to touch her. Jk, she'S pretty solid at the moment, but has received some small nerfs which should reduce PokeNami's effectiveness. Other than that she's sorta balanced, but if all the other main supports get nerfs she migth need some more too. Now to our favorite role in the game: the marksman: : Most people won't agree on this, but with the changes in the lates patch i consider him kinda balanced at the moment. The range nerfs made him defeatable in lane, and the spamable dash i no problem after the slow removal change. He's bursty, he's strong, he's a carry, but he has weaknesses which can be xploited if you know how to. the reason he's strong is only the fact that the meta doesn't allow adcs which potentially counter him (other than caitlyn) : I really have no idea what to do about her. She's not that overpowering or anything, but it really annoys me that she is THAT solid and a go-to pick. She lacks real strengths or weaknesses in my opinion. You just rightclick and ahrass in lane, mid game you fall off, and if you got ahead you might do something before the enemy Adc outduels you in every fight ever. I just think her to be annoying to play against, while also being boring to play as. Just my personal opinion on her tho. : No, i doNt# want to nerf him, don't be silly. Problem with Graves: Good laning with a lot of burst adn tankiness, but almost no way to utilize that outside of lane. His Q benefits form fighting close up, his E is both steroid and disengage which doesn'T mix too well, his W is just useless at this point because of the laughable radius and his passive helps at trading but has almost no other value since it has such a short duration. Then again he snowballs hard if he gets ahead. My solution: increase passive's duration by about 1.5 seconds (or less if that's too much), shorter cast range for E but bigger radius to synergize with the E engage. E: new passive- graves passively gains attackspeed (less than he has now ofc), active doubles the passive As bonus, passive is list after e is on CD. Active also immediately grants fully stacked passive -> enoforcing the "use it aggressively not defensively" from twitch's stealth nerfs. Also reduce base cooldown by around 2 or 3 seconds and reduc mana cost to 20/30. Maybe I'm going heavily over the top on this one, but I think graves should be all/in-to-the-face-biatch! My philosophy is: Make a daring dash INTO the fight and get properly rewarded for it by heavy DPS and tankiness increase. WHile that would make his teamfighting risky (probably more than now even) it would at least give him an identity. Making his E be up more often like Lucian's would deal with possible lategame problems. Also, FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING SACRED; GIVE THIS GUY THE CIGAR FROM THE CINEMATIC (a texture update like Sona's would make me happy) : A new favorite of mine. she has extremely high damage early on, hitting a Q poke properly makes for extremely efficeint poke, and the damage stacking on her W is pretty awesome. She also is extremely good at running down people thanks to Her E and passive. the problem: She has no escapes, has little mobility since passive only works if she isn't being targeted, and no self peel at all. In other words: She#S death fodder for assasins. IN every game i played her i got ahead early and snowballed in lane, wherease i got completely obliterated as soon as teamfights started. The likes of Talon, Fizz, or Maokai locked me down and blew me up and i had no way of dealing with it. Compare her to Twitch or Kog'maw: Both have no real escape, but Twitch has the ability to appear when he pleases and shoot down anything from huge range. Kog shreds any tank which makes it impossible to wall him, while he also gaines large range by using an ability. Mf neither has good range nor particular shredding or bursting abilities. Her ult isn't as overkill as it would ahve to be to give her presence in teamfights...also it locks her down and puts a big red ring target aorund her head spamming the quote "JUMP ME PLS" to all nearby assasins. Solutions: Increase basic attack range...which would, however, make her laning even stronger and would ultimately result in nerfs to her damage whic is something i don't want either. Second idea: make her ult overkill = more damage per bullet wave, meaning that MF's identity is: My team engages, i position myself ult, and clean up afterwards with the help of my passive. This way assasin are FORCEd to look for her and interrupt, kill her before she a chance to lay down the apocalypse. Third idea: Turn her E into . "Mf shoots a target and flips away form it, landing at her max aa range, while also stunning the target by shooting it in the crotch" Get this to a decent cooldown in lane and it would make her way more safe in terms of dealing with assasins bruisers. Her current E is jsut a lackluster and if anything, only improves her running down/snowballing ability by a little bit. Fourth idea: W passive is now actual passive. Old passive is on W and reads something like: Passive: Mf gains movements speed upon attacking enemy champions, this can stack up to x times. Active: same as old active on W If you combine this MF becomes a decent mobile markswoman who can effectively kite her enemies by attacking them and jumping away from them. while ahving to decide if she wants to lay down massive Aoe damage with her ult or stay mobile and shoot from medium range. In hindsight, this reminds me a lot of current ...but since rito said they would rework her into a proper adc anyways i don't see the problem here. Last words To sum up this huge pile of nonsensial daydreaming: Down with boring support spectrum, nerf the dominating supports, buff the underappreciated ADCs. P.S.: no i didn't forget about Varus and Ashe, but if MOrgana and Braum get tuned down and act more as counterpicks than instant picks these two can make combacks any time. I'M done. Category:Blog posts